


Shudder, Jerk

by raquelelpillo



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Death, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-01
Updated: 2010-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-09 20:38:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raquelelpillo/pseuds/raquelelpillo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ricochets in a Carentan alleyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shudder, Jerk

Shudder, jerk, twitch, mouth nothings that are supposed to mean something. This erratic dance of motions plays out on Dick's mouth with painful fury and weakness. Normally thin and unused, it is all expression now, colorful and generous and bleeding. Gasps rattle up from his throat and his mouth curls back in an ugly shape, his face contorting. He keens out when Nixon jostles him unapologetically in his hurry to drag him out of the line of fire and Nix wants to collapse in pain himself. Carentan gravel scraps through the fabric of his pants, skinning his knees, when he drops down against a sheltered wall to examine the damage.

Dick shudders against Nixon, coughs, and spits blood onto his friend. There's no apology in his eyes—they are swimmers in a quickly emptying sink, twisting and moving at the mercy of gravity pulling away at him. They're almost too busy to seek him out to say anything. The air is busy and rattled by voices which scuff the air like the overly eager jump boots doing the same, gathering anxiously around the fallen soldier.

Nixon had been first to turn at the sharp crack, to realize. The papers were flung against the wall and the clipboard cracked in half, falling dead in unison with Dick. Against a mortar shell of pain, his body resisted magnificently for a moment. Then, that fatal human weakness had collapsed him and Dick Winters collapsed bonelessly to the ground. Having neglected to fasten his chin-strap in the preceding fray of battle, the helmet clattered off with a gross 'thunk thunk.' Ran away, almost. Leaving a perfectly-unscathed head of hair, a coppery red under French sunlight, and a body that's pointing away from Nixon and towards the town, indicating from where the shots had come. Accusing with the last.

Nixon had curled his arms under Dick's armpits and dragged all hundred and something pounds of him and his gear as fast as his legs would fucking take him. Dick gasped and hissed sharp enough to wake the dead Germans scattered about. The rifle squealed and clawed the broken cobblestone road beneath them, catching more than once.

"Fuck, fuck, _fuck!_" is all Nixon can muster up when he falls on his ass, the gun caught on a rut. Helping hands claw them both, tugging, pulling. They could be the divine hands of the archangels for all Nixon can care at the moment—Dick is his map, his sole, pulsing instinct in the world (survival flew out the bay doors and scattered somewhere in Normandy, but never returned). A stumbling, barking, gasping mass, Dick, Nix, and the archangels (soldiers, shocked, worried) settle back behind a sheltered wall, safe from sniper fire.

Death is a ruthless bitch. She snatches Dick Winter's life, and robs him of his once impenetrable grace. He doesn't die calmly or quickly—he dies gasping, panting, wheezing, shuddering, jerking, dancing around in Nixon's arms. Skin once amusingly white, contrasted by a shock of red hair and a blue stare—an All-American face if there ever was one—is a sickly gray, like the corpses of pigs he'd seen strung up in butcher shops back home.

Nixon asks him to stay over and over while someone else screams for a medic and he grips his shoulder blade in one hand, his chin and jaw in the other. "Please stay, Dick? Please?"

Dick whimpers and grunts and forces half-screams through his gritted mouth, his stare attempting to focus on his friend but seeing something more distant. He spits blood as best he can, and when his mouth grows too weak, it bubbles through the corners of his lips.

"Please stay? _Goddammnit,_ Dick, stay here!"

It's a good thing he's in France—long removed from anyone familiar who could wince at the desperation in his voice, nearly rising to a panicked scream.

He doesn't know why he's trying to be so polite—Dick knows… he knows, the heaving chest and dramatic death throes tell him, but he can't do anything about it…

Nixon finds himself muttering, whining, "Yes, you could…" into a shoulder, which smells like paper and old houses with attics and typewriters click-clacking through endless nights of work. There is a corresponding arm around his back, pinning him and all the loose parts he's made of (panic, hurt, dark; _Dick, please stay_) together.

"I'm staying." Dick hooks his chin over his friend's shoulder in the dark and asks quietly, "Okay?"

Nixon gasps a little himself, shuddering at how cold the fingertips are that start touching his head, and wonders if Dick heard him screaming in his sleep outside their quarters. Then he stops thinking, and goes cautiously back into sleep, sitting up in Dick's arms. He knows Dick will remain the night through no matter what he dreams, but he does not want to again dream of the gray skin of dead pigs.


End file.
